Caring consumption and sustainability: Insights from household provisioning in the first ten years of motherhood

• Understandings and practices of mothering intersect with the sustainability of food provisioning. • Policy for sustainable household consumption needs to understand consumption as relational and flexible. • Holistic conceptions of sustainability are needed which are environmentally beneficial and support practices of care. As primary sites of everyday consumption households play a key role in sustainability transitions. Yet neither everyday consumption nor what goes on within households have received much attention within the sustainability transitions literature. This paper contributes to this research gap by exploring how everyday practices of mothering intersect with aspects of the sustainability of everyday food provisioning. This is explored via longitudinal research with 10 women over a period of 10 years beginning when they were pregnant with their first child. Analysis considers engagement in both overtly ethical or environmental product choices and the adoption of online shopping- a mode of consumption which may be ‘inadvertently’ environmental. Analysis highlights that provisioning practices are profoundly relational and flexible, prioritising care, thrift and time management. Sustainability transitions need to adopt holistic discourses of sustainable living which embrace the relational character of everyday consumption and support affordable and feasible everyday practices of care.